Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health

Population Health Research Brief Series

The Limits of SNAP in Addressing Older Adult Food Insecurity

Colleen M. Heflin and Madonna Harrington Meyer

September 2025

Colleen Heflin

Madonna Harrington Meyer

Public Administration & International Affairs Department

Sociology Department

Center for Aging and Policy Studies

Lerner Center Population Health Research Brief Series

Aging

Food Security

Nutrition

U.S. Health Policy

United States

Colleen Heflin

Portrait of a smiling person with short gray hair, wearing a blue ruffled shirt, set against a blurred green background.

Madonna Harrington Meyer

Abstract

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is designed to address the economic roots of food insecurity. However, SNAP participation rates among older adults substantially lag behind those of other age groups.

Based on the book, Food for Thought: Understanding Older Adults Food Insecurity, this brief describes how SNAP is not well designed for older adults in three respects: (1) the high levels of administrative burden associated with eligibility, certification, and benefit-determination processes, (2) the low value of SNAP benefits compared with the high costs associated with redeeming them, and (3) the high levels of state variation in SNAP policies that produce substantially different conditions for SNAP depending on where one lives.

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